When the slender, affable Chinese man took the podium in Harlem’s posh Golden Gate ballroom on a late autumn afternoon to denounce three recent lynchings in Mississippi, the audience’s FBI informant perked up.
How did a small-town dermatologist in Taiwan amass the most historically important record collection in China, one so vast he doesn’t know its size? Post Magazine finds out.
Author and history professor Gao Yunxiang unpacks the little-known yet important relationship between Paul Robeson and China, which continues to resonate powerfully today.